Saving The Devil
by ALetteredWoman
Summary: They had to save Lucifer from Amara. Had to. Because it was Cas, too, who was there. But how could Sam stand to do it? Spoilers for S11E21 and E22...added chapter 2 because the show is totally ignoring it.
1. Chapter 1

Donatello's sense of where Amara was acted kind of like sonar. At the beginning, he started by turning in the car, tilting his head and listening. Then he sat up straight and pointed, saying, "That way!" "That way" was easy at first, pretty much translated as "Head directly to Kansas City, do not pass 'Go', do not collect one hundred dollars." As they got closer, though, the road started angling in another direction. Donatello, agitated, repeated the turn-listen-point routine; this time, he pointed slightly off to the left side.

Sam sighed, finding a cross street. He turned down it and drove, until Donatello repeated his routine. This time, it was now off a bit to the right side. The closer they got, the more often Donatello had to redirect them. He did reassure them that the pinging he felt was getting stronger. Metatron slouched in the passenger seat, making sarcastic comments.

While he drove, automatically avoiding other cars and stopping at stop lights, Sam nervously drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

 _We're really doing this. Really busting Lucifer free. Lucifer!_

He controlled his automatic shudder. Never show weakness to Metatron. He might claim to be on their side - God's side - but Sam would never, ever trust him. He was a douchebag in frowsy professor's duds when they met him, and he was still a douchebag now. As soon as this was done...well. He and Dean would just have to keep an eye on him.

 _If_ things worked out. Otherwise, they wouldn't be keeping an eye on anything except the nothingness inside Amara.

They were now driving through an industrial area to the west of the city, and they were very close, according to Donatello. He thumped the side of his head with a grimace. "If this pinging gets any louder, it's going to drive me completely insane!" He pointed ahead to a large storage tank. "There. She's there."

Sam eyed him in the rear view mirror and nodded, pulling the car to a stop. "Okay, then. Time to..." He pulled out his phone, hit Dean's speed dial entry, held it to his ear.

"Yo, Sammy."

"We're here. Time to do your thing with Amara."

"'Kay." Dean paused. "What if it doesn't work?"

Sam sighed. "Well, then, we'll be squashed like bugs, and you and - and Chuck - " It seemed so disrespectful to refer to God - _God!_ \- as "Chuck". Then again, it was mighty damned hard to respond to him in person as "God". " - will just have to come up with Plan B."

Dean barked out a harsh laugh. "Yeah, right. Okay, gimme a few minutes, then head in."

Sam ended the call and looked at his passengers. "Two minutes."

They waited. Donatello suddenly sat up and smiled. "Ahhh! Gone! I can hear again!"

Sam opened the door. "Let's go." He didn't intend to be curt or short. It was just...

 _Lucifer. I'm here to rescue Lucifer. I am certifiable. And against God's wishes!_

They walked to the storage tank and looked in through the door at the bottom. There, hanging from stocks, was Lucifer. Weak, limp, bloody, bruised. Sam crushed a small flare of vengeful glee at seeing his nemesis like this. The stocks were a nice touch on Amara's part. Very medieval. Of course, she hadn't been there. Where had she gotten the idea? Whatever...

 _Cas. Remember that it's Cas you want to rescue here. Lucifer is just along for the ride. Cas is in there, and hurting._

Lucifer heard them, looked up, rolled his eyes. He spat out some blood, and croaked, "Oh, goody. Larry, Curly, and Moe." Sam's jaw clenched. Cas's body, yes, but not Cas. The way he talked, the timbre of his voice, his expression...even hanging there, he exuded the cocky spitefulness that was Lucifer's personality. He clenched down hard on his need to turn, run, be far, far away.

"Search and rescue?" Lucifer looked them over, then paused at Metatron. "Oh, wow. It's one of Dad's favorites. Your ticket finally got punched, eh?" Metatron looked surly. "It's wacky, isn't it? One minute you're...nobody. The next - shazam! - you're Joan of Arc! Let's hope this ends better than that."

Talk, talk, talk. Sam clenched his fists, doing everything from smashing them into that face, add to the collection of motley injuries. "All right, can the small talk. We're busting you out of here."

Lucifer sneered. "Seems fair, since I wouldn't _be_ here if you lunatics hadn't set me up to be grabbed by Amara."

"You're gonna help us take her down." Sam paused, then continued in a hard voice, "If you say no, we'll just leave you here in Abu Ghraib." Surely an appeal to his self-interest would sell? Carrot, stick...

Lucifer coughed, spat some more blood, then said, in an incredulous tone, "Say _no_?! Look at what she's done to me! Do I _look_ like a fan?!" Sam looked him up and down, snorted softly, then motioned to Metatron.

Metatron stepped forward to examine the cuffs tying Lucifer up. He glanced back at Sam, shook his head, then started muttering, running through his repertoire of Enochian spells. Lucifer gave him a scathing look, then said to Sam, "What...just grabbed this from the steno pool?" Metatron's lips twitched downward and he looked like he was about to burst into tears, but he kept on. Sam found himself wanting to defend him, and almost laughed out loud. Stuck here with Lucifer, Metatron, and a newbie prophet! He rubbed his palms on his thighs; they were sweating slightly.

"You understand you'll be working with...your Father. Is that gonna be a problem?"

 _Say yes. Please say yes. Then I can leave you here with a clear conscience..._

"That's family. This is bigger." Sam's eyes widened. _Seriously?!_

"So you'll table all the...old stuff...?" 'Old stuff'. Being made to bear the Mark, to keep the Darkness chained. Being asked to love humanity more than God. Rebelling. Being tossed into the Cage for eternities. Escaping and trying to start the Apocalypse to rid his Father's creation of the blight of humanity. Being locked back into the Cage. 'Stuff'.

"What happens in Heaven stays in Heaven." Lucifer, beaten and bloodied as he was, still smirked, still joked.

Sam was starting to get antsy. Every minute they spent here meant another minute Dean had to dance around with Amara. Something could be happening to him right now, and they wouldn't know until Amara showed back up. "Metatron, are we getting any closer? Dean can't stall forever."

 _Forever. That's what every moment with the Devil feels like. Don't think of that. Don't remember. Think of what we're all facing, right here, right now._

Metatron mumbled another spell. "I'm - I'm narrowing it down."

Lucifer heaved a long-suffering sigh. Sam wanted to smack it off his face. Then Metatron gasped a small, "Oh! Oh!" He murmured some more, and let out an exultant, "Yes!", the shackles fell off, and Lucifer slid bonelessly down to the wooden platform the stocks were on, groaning in pain.

"Okay, Lucifer, zap us out of here - quick!" Sam snapped.

Lucifer groaned again, lifted his head up, and laughed faintly. "Oh, no can do."

Sam froze. "What do you mean?" _Liar!_ his mind shouted.

Lucifer snorted and shrugged, then winced. "Temporarily grounded."

Metatron pursed his lips and looked wise. "Equipment malfunction," he murmured. Sam darted a frantic look at him. _But Metatron lies, too. Who to trust?!_

Donatello, who had been watching the whole thing intently, disbelieving, whirled around and peered out the door, holding his hands to his ears. "Uh - uh, guys! Guys! I'm feeling her! She's coming!"

 _Shit! Now what?!_

Of course, there was only one answer. They'd gotten this far. The only way out was to go the way they had come, Baby. The question was...

 _...what about Lucifer?_

 _Leave him. Just turn away. Don't look back. Just get out of here._

The other part of him balked.

 _Can't do that. Can't leave Cas, dammit! And...we need Lucifer. We need all the mojo we can get. He can help. He helped before._

Sam drew in a deep, shuddering breath. "All right. We're outta here." He motioned to Donatello, Metatron, moved forward toward Lucifer. His skin twitched as he got closer, and his breathing was shallow, swift, his hands shaking.

 _I can do this._

 _No! Don't touch him! I can't - ! Oh, God, please - !_

God didn't answer. No surprise there. He gritted his teeth, steeled himself. "Okay, come on." He reached down, slid an arm around Lucifer's crumpled body, lifted. Donatello lifted from the other side. They staggered down, off the platform, dragging Lucifer between them. Sam hoped that the way he trembled wasn't obvious to the newly-fledged prophet.

 _Don't think. Think of Cas. Not Lucifer, this is Cas! You're not touching Lucifer. It's not him._

Sam gasped, then called out, "Metatron, come on!"

"It's okay, Sam. I got this. You go."

Sam and Donatello stopped, looked at each other, and Sam shot a look at the fallen angel. He looked as unprepossessing as ever, short, pudgy, bearded, graying hair, watery, blinking eyes, petulant expression. Stubborn, too: his lower lip was sticking out.

"What?! Come _on_!"

 _Stop wasting time, Metatron! Get this over with, get this vile creature away from me, get back home, to the Bunker, hurry, hurry, hurry!_

Metatron's lower lip stuck out a bit more. He smiled, all sad basset hound. "I'm serious. I got this." He flapped his hands, shooing them out. Sam blinked, then nodded, looked at Donatello, and they both went back to hauling Lucifer to the car. It was faster now that they were on flat ground.

 _Who would ever have thought selfish, douchey old Metatron would be willing to actually sacrifice himself?!_

He and Donatello shoved Lucifer into the passenger seat, Donatello dove into the back, and Sam jumped in, started the car, spun it in a 180, and peeled out of the parking area, tires squealing. Donatello twisted around, wide-eyed, and stared back at the storage tank. "She's there..." he whispered. A few minutes later, he flinched, straightened, and looked fixedly forward. "She...did something...to him. He's...not here any more."

Sam glanced at him in the rear view mirror. "He's dead?" Donatello shrugged, looking shell-shocked.

"I don't know. Just...he's not _here_ any more."

Sam nodded, and concentrated on driving. Getting out of the industrial area, back to the back-roads highways, was much quicker than it had been getting in. _Get home, get home, get home_ , was all he could think. He didn't look at the passenger seat. Didn't think of who was there. His skin still crawled, and right now, he just wanted to get back to the Bunker, dive into a shower, and scrub himself clean from...touching... _that_. His hands rubbed on the wheel, as he unconsciously tried to wipe them off.

Donatello muttered, "The secretary...you were kidding with that, right?"

"He meant well," Sam said. _Did he mean well when he killed Dean? When he stole the Angel Tablet? When he played God? When he had Gadreel kill Kevin with my hands? When he made the angels fall from Heaven?_

Sam shrugged. 'He meant well...' It was a sad, sorry kind of epitaph. In the end, he had sacrificed himself to try to...make amends? It didn't make up for everything. But it did help. A bit.

As did driving. The back roads calmed him, kept him from thinking of their passenger, of what he had had to do. He relaxed, bit by bit, his shoulders loosening up, his jaw unclenching, as the fields of crops passed by in their hypnotizing sameness.

And then...up ahead of them -

Donatello flinched, gasped, clutched his head.

Amara. In the middle of the road. Sam gripped the steering wheel, breathed deep, and kept going, until the car stopped dead right in front of her. His foot was still on the gas, the tires spinning, but the car wasn't moving.

"Spare the universe," she said, snarling. "Spare _this_ ," she spat, holding her hand up. Donatello started muttering in the back seat; it sounded like the old atheist was trying to bring up half-forgotten prayers from his childhood. Sam clenched his jaw, threw the car into reverse, and gunned the gas. Tires squealed again, smoking, and Sam could smell burning rubber. Still, the car didn't move.

"You really aren't worth sparing," Amara mused sadly. "None of you."

 _Oh, God, please - !_

A wasted prayer, for sure. But still, out of old habit, of long-held faith, he couldn't help it. He hated himself for even doing it, knowing it was worthless.

In the blink of an eye, it happened. The fields, the old drive-in movie theater by the side of the road, the road itself, Amara - gone. The car dropped, as if from a height, and landed, with a sickening crunching sound, on...

...concrete? A room? A...vaguely _familiar_ room?

Donatello looked around, jaw agape. His voice sounded weak, overwhelmed; too much had happened in the past day. "What...what...happened?! Where are we?!"

Sam looked around, heart still beating wildly from the past minute. He pushed open the car door and stepped out, waving away smoke and the stench of rubber. He coughed, then said, laughing in disbelief, "Home." Donatello and Lucifer climbed out of the car and followed him, staggering and weak, as he climbed the stairs out of the room.

He made his way to the War Room, walked in, and there was Chuck, as scruffy-looking as ever. Chuck ducked his head a bit with a tiny smile, a little embarrassed. "Occasionally, I do answer a prayer."

 _Yeah. Now. Now you answer a prayer. What about back then, when we were facing Lucifer all by ourselves - ? When Jess died - ? When Dean died and I was alone - ?_

Sam shut the thoughts down. No doubt, Chuck could hear them. He could probably taste the bitterness rolling off Sam in waves. Sam moved into the room, then stopped and turned when he felt the tension in the air.

Lucifer had followed him, and was leaning weakly against the wall near the door, staring at Chuck. Chuck was staring back. Lucifer's face was stiff, bitter, a look Sam had never seen before. Chuck was all injured parenthood, also stiff, also bitter.

"You've changed," Chuck muttered. Lucifer's lips twisted.

"You've changed."

"Well...still...I'm pretty much the same," Chuck answered. They stared at each other more, then Chuck waved a hand, and Lucifer - _Cas_ , dammit! - was healed, no more bruises, burns, blood. Just Cas's body, standing here, staring at Chuck. Still filled with Lucifer. Cas still buried somewhere in there.

Sam couldn't take it any more. "Scuse me, guys," he muttered, and walked steadily out of the room, down the hall, toward his room, to the shower he was desperate for.

 _Lucifer. Here. In our home. Working with us. Yeah, right. What if he reneges? What if he's playing us? If he says he'll help with Amara, then turns on us? I thought Cas was God's favorite - why didn't He just whip up a new vessel for Lucifer, get him out of Cas, let Cas free?_

 _Don't think about Lucifer. Don't think about the Cage. Don't think, don't think, don't think..._

He shuddered, pulled off his clothes, turned the shower on full blast, full heat. He waited as the room filled with steam, then stepped in, under the blessedly clean water. He started scrubbing, every spot that had touched Lucifer, harder and harder and harder, until he could see welts rise up. Then, with a gasp, he closed his eyes, clenching them shut, leaned his hands and head against the shower enclosure, and started weeping. After a while, he slid to the floor, the hot water streaming down around him, and huddled there with his head in his hands, shuddering and crying, until he could cry no more.

 _Don't remember. Don't._


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Back again. Since the writers ignored it** ** _again_** **, I had to interject a quick behind-the-scenes snippet.**

"We gotta get them to talk." Dean ran a hand over his short dark hair, grimacing. Sam just leaned against the wall, arms folded, and stared into the distance. "I mean...if we need _him_ , we need him talking to his _Dad_ , right? They've gotta work together."

 _Why are we doing this? Why is...that creature...in our home? Can't we do all this...someplace else?_

"Hey. Sam. Yoo-hoo! Anyone there?" Dean waved a hand in front of his eyes. He blinked, focused on him.

"Yeah. Right." He felt like his voice was old and creaky, strained, echoing how he felt, but Dean didn't seem to notice, starting to pace back and forth in the hallway in front of him, head down, lips pursed, thinking. He stopped in front of Sam again.

"So you got any bright ideas?"

 _Ideas. I am so out of ideas. All I want to do is get away from him._

Sam shook himself, pulled himself fully into the present. "Yeah, no. No ideas. They've got to talk, but Lucifer - " _Lucifer! Here!_ " - just scowls at Chuck. And vice versa. It'd do great for ratings on an afternoon talk show." He snorted at the thought.

Dean stiffened as if struck, held up a finger.

"Yeah! Like...uh...Dr. Phil! A family intervention!" His green eyes were bright with determination. "That's the ticket! We just drag them together, make them hash shit out, and, boom! We're good to go!"

Sam said nothing, just cocked a skeptical eyebrow. Dean pulled his head back, injured. "What?! Hell, we've got nothing else!"

"Dean and Sam Winchester, family therapists?" _Crazy. This is crazy._

"Yup. We can do it!" Dean clapped his hands, dusted them together.

"Count me out," Sam said, voice hard. "Not doing it." He pulled himself from the wall and started to head down the hall.

Dean grabbed him by the arm, pulled him back, peered at him as if seeing him for the first time, face concerned. "Dude. You okay?"

"Okay." Sam stopped and stared back, incredulous. "Lucifer is making himself at home in _our_ home, you want me to help you lead him and Chuck in some touchy-feely talk therapy, and you're asking me if I'm ' _okay_ '?!" His voice rose and he drew in a ragged breath, feeling as if he was drowning. " _Lucifer_. You want me to hang out with him? Make nice?! Play polite?! Let bygones be bygones or some such shit?!"

Flames rose in his mind. Hooks. A knife peeling away his skin, Jess laughing while she did it. Dad raping him. Dean, burning alive, screaming. He shuddered, squeezed his eyes shut, then popped them open as the memories became more solid in the darkness. He had to stop it, or the memories - long faded by time - would start haunting him all over again, fresh and new.

Dean's mouth opened to say something, then he snapped it shut. His eyes were totally focused on Sam, warm, worried, accepting. He shook Sam's arm gently. "No. No, you don't have to be playing friends with him. I'm not asking that. I know this is hard - "

Sam yanked his arm away. "Hard," he mimicked harshly. Dean closed his eyes, set his jaw, sighed, then re-opened them.

"Yeah. 'Hard'. But y'know what else is 'hard'? The end of the world. The Darkness rampaging through small towns, killing everyone or sending them crazy, people wandering around without souls. What about when she decides she wants to up the ante? Boston. Imagine that fog shit she has going for her swallowing up Boston. And then, oh, Miami. L.A. Mexico City. London, Paris, Istanbul, Beijing! And then the whole fucking universe!" His voice was passionate. " _Saving_ people, Sammy. That's our job."

Sam slumped back against the wall, head tilted back, staring at the ceiling. He covered his eyes with a large hand, then dragged it slowly down his face. Against his will, his eyes began to water and a tear leaked out. "Dean..." His voice trembled. "I know. Saving people. But - this..."

Dean laid strong hands on his shoulders, squeezed. "Dude. I know. I _know_! Been there, done that, got the crazies inside to prove it. It'd be like me having to buddy-buddy with Alistair." For a moment, Dean looked over his shoulder with wide eyes, paling at the thought, muscles in his jaw jumping. Then he breathed harshly and refocused on Sam. "But...you gotta do it, Sammy. I'll be there. You'll get through it. Just a few days, man." He rocked him back and forth, one time. "I know you can do it."

Sam sighed, took a step forward, and leaned his head, just the tip, on his brother's shoulder. Dean's fingers dug into his shoulders, then he shifted his arms, pulled him into a hug.

"When I see him - not Cas - everything comes back, y'know?" Sam whispered. "Thought it was all gone, over. Thought I'd beaten him back, back in that prison cell in Limbo."

Dean thumped his back. "Yeah. Gotcha." They stood there for a few minutes, then Sam sniffed, pulled away, dragged his arm across his face to wipe the tears away. Then he set his jaw, folded his lips together, and gave Dean a sharp nod.

"Right. Let's do this."

Dean gave him a rueful, lopsided smile, ruffled his hair, and gave his cheek a quick, sharp pat. "Good man. Let's go."

 **A/N: If you liked this, you might also like In Limbo ( s/11664945/1/In-Limbo), which starts off doing the same exploration of Sam's feelings when they confronted Lucifer in the Cage. Then I veer off wildly, so no guarantees about the other two chapters. ;-)**


End file.
